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- But what if as you use the phrase “I used to [. . .]” your own heart sinks, or your psyche panics at the idea that you might not be what you think yourself to be? Or that what you think yourself to be crumbles into nameless dread at the thought that you are not being what you are doing? The party questioner is only you (or me) on another day, wondering how on earth we are to get through the rest of our time as conscious beings without the reassurance that we are a writer, a teacher, a taxi driver, a parent. The Tory rhetoric about the skiver and scrounger is not nearly as disturbing as the idea we have of ourselves, of being cut loose from a sense of purpose. And the venom directed at the skivers is surely the result of the rhetoric feeding on our own fears about a life without a labelled purpose.